One of the brightest examples of how an ambitious project turned to a scam is a notorious Estonian data processing and customer service center called Bienvenue OÜ (former Complus Consulting). The company’s was established by Laurent Descharreaux, a French businessman, who decided to set up a technological center in Estonia and open several offices in France, Great Britain, and the USA.
To take an advantage of the Estonian business climate, Laurent Descharreaux created Complus Consulting in 2007 to provide services to customers from well-off countries. He moved his companies’ activities to the countries with low standards of living, such as Estonia and Bulgaria with an aim to make a killing. To put it in prospective, the business must have been profitable, but all of Laurent Descharreaux’ companies went bankrupt in almost no time. As the business flattered, Laurent Descharreaux created a new business scheme.
The year of 2010 was tough for Europe and Estonia in particular. The global crisis aftermath hit all the regions of the single currency bloc. Right at that time cheer news in the Estonian mass media created a buzz. Tallinn was said to be a hub for a large international company with 700 new jobs. This news was welcomed by the local residents and politicians. The latest even promised to support the company of Laurent Descharreaux and subsidize the creation of new vacancies. All too often politicians are blinded by enormous ambitions and are idle to check the basic information about the project they support, to wit a company’s website and financial situation. Thus, dazzled by airy promises of success, the politician supports a swindler and wheeler-dealer whose the only aim is to make use of the politician’s prominence and create a false impression of successful business to attract trustful investors and then escape with their money.
And Laurent Descharreaux managed to do for effect: the office was equipped with Apple monitors, the director of the promising start-up eagerly gave out interviews.
Nevertheless, by that time Bienvenue OÜ had already accumulated a huge debt. In addition, the company never paid taxes. The company filed its last annual report in 2009.
Below is the company’s tax debt:
Erijuhtude tulumaks 806 570,70 (Special Income Tax)
Intress 408,61 (Interest)
Kinnipeetud tulumaks 120 557,65 (Withheld Income Tax)
Kogumispensionimakse 3 561,57 (Pension Tax)
Käibemaks 194 412,85 (VAT – Value Added Tax)
Sotsiaalmaks 227 375,00 (Social Tax)
Töötuskindlustusmakse 26 175,05 (Unemployment Tax)
Laurent Descharreaux gave birth to the fraudulent scheme creating tens of new companies to skip on taxes and never pay back the debts to its creditors and contra agents. But as things have come to a serious pass, he went on the run.
In total, Bienvenue OÜ owed 1,379,061 euros to its debtors. On the top of that, the company’s debt to Swedbank clocked in at 210,019 euros and 366,788 euros - to Elion, Estonian largest organizations. Quite soon Bienvenue OÜ found itself in the black list of top 10 Estonian tax debtors and was deleted from company’s register. This information also appeared in Estonian mass media. Similar Descharreaux fraud scheme aimed at theft of large amounts of government funds is being prepared in Bulgaria.
But huge debts and disappointed hopes of Estonians did not prevent Laurent Descharreaux from getting away with this. Quite providently, he reassigned his companies to Bulgarian proxy, Simeon Ganchev, thus leaving no chance for his debtors and contra agents to get their money back. After that going bankrupt his companies’ network collapsed like a house of cards. Ironically enough, just before going bankrupt, Laurent Descharreuax renamed his Complus Consulting to Bienvenue which means “welcome” in French, although the most logical name for the company would be “Good Bye.”
One may say that business is hard and that was a mere accident. However, the fact that Laurent Descharreaux had involved proxies to escape publicity and bad fame before deleting his companies from register proves that his actions were a well-planned fraudulent plan, and not an accident. Laurent Descharreaux uses witty schemes to cheat his contra agents. And cheating is the main purpose of his business activity.
Another strong reason to think so is Complus Consulting website. Present-day technologies rule modern world. Often a company’s website is the company’s image and not the brand or good name. Website is what a customer commonly sees and learns first about a company. Complus Consulting has promised to create about 700 jobs (it is not every successful firm that can boast of such a numerous staff). But just looking at company’s website, one may feel that it was created carelessly and is at odds with ambitious plans of the company’s director. Absence of contact data as well as any company’s information is descriptive.
Currently many creditors of Laurent Descharreaux from around the globe make a search for him to get large amounts of money he owes them.
Now lawyers are trying to collect debt from Laurent Descharreaux on behalf of one of his creditors. If you know anything about Laurent Descharreaux, please email to private.legal.consults@gmail.com.
